“Anyway,” says Bobby, “it’s not for me. I’m sending a drink to a friend. My mother, actually.” Bobby sends a boiler-maker to room 210 with a note explaining that English fiancés are undesirable. He invites Marianne to Deadrock, Montana, and signs his name.
“Thanks a million, Jack. Love your haircut. Put that on my room.”
Marianne and her fiancé are sitting in Scott’s Restaurant, off Park Lane. The best of the John Bull atmosphere with professional men of seafood shucking oysters behind a zinc bar. Marianne is just luscious, while her friend seems to have been hand-carved from slabs of cold salt pork.
He says, “You are heroic to have come. A little fish will help with the lag. The wine will make you sleep. I have a meeting with a distinguished do-wop band, after which I’m yours. You do look sleepy.”
“As of yet, Allen, the trip hasn’t gotten to me.”
“I think you are spectacular.”
Through the reversed lettering of the glass front window, Bobby Decatur is holding a sign that reads, THAT MAN IS A CUR. Marianne sees it.
“Darling, are you dizzy?”
“No,” she says, “but I must go to the ladies’. Back in a jiff.”
Outside, Marianne says to Bobby, “Leave me alone, you little shit. And I put that drink you sent in the toilet.”
“The loo.”
“What?”
“It’s called the loo in England. Get with it.”
“I’m going in.”
At the table, the fiancé asks, “Better?” The record industry has given him the remote gape of a rock star.
“Much.”
“You look distressed.”
“I’m being pestered.”
“And by whom?”
“An evidently crazy young man.”
“I’m going to stop him.”
“Actually, he’s back in New York. I’m afraid it’s still on my mind.”
“Shaking his thing in doorways, I suppose.”
“But he’s half charming. Anyway, darling, he’s thousands of miles away. Not to bother.”
“Half charming?”
Bobby is in his clean plain room at Blake’s. There are many very old well-bound books. There are many fine engravings of hunting hawks. On its perch, weathering in front of an open window, is a hooded falcon. Bobby presses his fist forward, and the hawk steps up onto his wrist. He draws the hooded bird close to his face and whispers, “Hello, in there. I’ve met a girl.”
Bobby buys a chicken at the Kensington grocer, a whole chicken. He descends to the underground and rides in silence, carrying the chicken in his lap. He heads for a tattoo parlor near Knightsbridge.
At the end of the day, Hildegarde, at the front desk in Blake’s, hands Marianne a beautifully wrapped box. Marianne takes it to her room and removes her coat. She sits on the bed and opens the box. The chicken lies nestled in excelsior, its breast tattooed Born to raise hell.
Marianne smiles.
A middle-aged couple living on the first floor of Blake’s idly dismembers the morning Times on their patio while eating breakfast. A dead mouse falls on the table. The gentleman lets his gaze travel upward to the falcon pacing nervously on the balcony above, fretting over its own lost breakfast.
At the front desk, Hildegarde says to Marianne, “Never mind the Portobello Road. It’s all queers selling Marilyn Monroe pictures.”
“I need a sweater and souvenir paperweights for my nieces.”
“What was in it?”
“In what?”
“The box.”
“A chicken.”
“A chicken! I think that is the height of rudeness. In my country it is considered inappropriate to send a lady a chicken.”
“It was delicious,” lies Marianne defensively.
The manager is at Bobby’s door. He’s a Midlands fellow with surfacing blood vessels in the points of his cheeks.
“Mr. Decatur, we’ve had a complaint as to the bird. Mr. and Mrs. Tripp downstairs assert that it is dropping mice amid their breakfast.” His right hand illustrates the downward progress of a mouse in air. “The bird,” he adds.
“I have arranged to sell the bird to an Arab.”
“Not because of this small complaint—”
“I’m returning to the United States of America. I’ve met a girl, and it is impractical to transport falcons on commercial aircraft.”
“Actually, there’s an Arab gentleman in the lobby just now, actually.”
“It’s our man. Send him whilst I dust the bird.”
A short time later, a rather bouncy sheikh sits in Bobby’s room, in a leather chair. His kaffiyeh is very well lighted by a standing lamp. He has the carriage of a lazy natural athlete.
“I feel you have overpriced the hawk, Bobby.”
“Say, Sheikh, you need a prairie falcon. The American West, get it?”
“Five thousand is a joke.”
“It’s an Arab’s job to pay too much.”
“If I give this kind of money, I’m compromised each time I try to buy an American hawk.”
“I know what you offered the Air Force Academy for the Arctic falcon.”
“That’s different. I was in Colorado. I was skiing. I was tooted out. And it could have been taken as a political gesture. Exxon was on every slope.”
“What kind of airplane do you have?”
“De Havilland with a custom galley. When it’s on autopilot, the pilot cooks. What does that have to do with it?”
“A week with the plane and the hawk is a gift.”
The sheikh unwinds his rig from about his ears as he thinks. It makes the sheikh’s beard seem wrong.
“Bobby, it’s a deal. You should have been a pimp.”
“It’s never too late.”
In Blake’s small dining room, Bobby and Marianne sit at separate tables, though tiny rippling energy waves connect them. Bobby sends Marianne a Shirley Temple. Marianne sends Bobby a Bionic Boy. These concoctions are like the filaments sent out by warring spiders.
Marianne calls out, “Thank you, it’s fantastic! But don’t drop by the table to discuss it!”
“Can I interest you in a martial-arts film festival?”
“Gosh, no.”
Marianne gets up from her table and walks to Bobby’s.
“Don’t get up. Listen, you’re terribly interesting. But I’m here to see my fiancé, and you’re a vulgar little shit.”
“I have a de Havilland and an MEA pilot who cooks.”
“Right, and then I’m going back to the United States. It’s silly, really it is, to spend your time on something that isn’t happening. Isn’t happening, got it?”
Bobby hears a knock on the door of his room. When he opens it, there is Marianne. He says, “Come in, come in.” No surprise here. Atop her in no time.
“Got anything to read?”
“Sure do. A history of falconry in Persia do?”
“Just right,” says Marianne. Bobby fishes the old volume off the shelf and hands it to her.
“I’m going to the country with my fiancé. I need something to read. Haven’t got your bookplate in here, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Good, thanks, ’bye.”
Gone.
“You be sure and bring that book back. It’s — it’s—” Bobby goes to the empty falcon perch. “It’s my book.”
Bobby Decatur is all alone in an unsuccessful tearoom.
“A weekend can be a long time when you’re missing someone. Darling, it was an eternity. I thought of you in the country with an Englishman the color of putty. And I ached. I really did.”